Introduction
Evangelicalism is not a uniquely American phenomenon. Manifestations of it are
global. There are evangelicals, and in fast-growing numbers, in Africa, Asia, Latin
Amer i ca, and South Amer i ca. What began as a transatlantic movement in the 1700s,
with religious roots in the Reformation era of the 1500s, became an international
movement by the 2000s. Evangelicals belong to many Protestant denominations
and to thousands of nondenominational churches—independent churches or net-
works of churches that claim no affiliation, such as Southern Baptist, Episcopal,
United Methodist, or Lutheran. Evangelicals span the economic spectrum and the
educational spectrum. They also vote in every color of the political prism. One sim-
ply cannot say that an evangelical looks like x or y or z. But that is not to say that one
cannot identify anything about evangelicals.
In 1989, British historian David Bebbington published a seminal volume on Brit-
ish evangelicalism titled Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s
to the 1980s. In addition to noting the deep and wide transatlantic ties between evan-
gelicalism in the British Isles and evangelicalism in the United States, Bebbington
presented what has come to be called by historians of religion the “Bebbington
Quadrilateral” or the “Evangelical Quadrilateral.” What is meant by this is Bebbing-
ton’s identification of four central elements, or characteristics, of the evangelical
experience: (1) biblicism—a particular regard for the Bible (e.g., all essential spiri-
tual truth is to be found in its pages), (2) crucicentrism—a focus on the sacrificial
death atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross, (3) conversionism—the belief that
human beings need to be converted, and (4) activism—the belief that the gospel mes-
sage needs to be expressed in effort such that it is proclaimed and applied.
As with most segments and aspects of American life and culture, American evan-
gelicalism is far from monolithic. Using the imagery of Genesis 37:3, where readers
learn of Hebrew patriarch Jacob’s “coat of many colors,” so too are evangelicals in
the United States part of a multifaceted, multigenerational, and multiethnic religious
culture. And evangelical Amer i ca is changing demographically in rates equal to, if
not surpassing, national trends. For example, Hispanic evangelicals are growing
rapidly within American evangelicalism (and elsewhere). Politically, evangelicals
are also diverse. Although the majority self-identify as moderate or conservative,
broader and left-wing politics also have a steady and firm stance within evangeli-
calism, dating at least to the early 1960s. The same is true for social issues that are
so often a part of political discourse and posturing in the United States.
Whereas one might rightly consider with American evangelicalism historian
George M. Marsden that the American religious fundamentalism of the 1920s and
